


The Original Alice

by RebeccaAnabelBurrows



Series: The Seven Alices [1]
Category: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Related Fandoms
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Alice in Wonderland References, Gen, Pregnant Character, a few at least, but I think it's likely to see it that way, but not really requited, endgame Alice/Reginald, farewell, leaving wonderland, lots of feels, this isn't a happy story, unhappy relationship, well it is not really stated here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 05:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20651864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RebeccaAnabelBurrows/pseuds/RebeccaAnabelBurrows
Summary: Alice says goodbye to her Wonderland's friends for the last time. This is the start of her legacy.





	The Original Alice

**Author's Note:**

> I use Alice Liddell and Reginald Hargreaves' names for pratical reasons. Don't attribute my characters' actions and thoughts to them. Also, the whole family tree I created for those stories isn't a real thing.

"Goodbye, my dear friends."

It was the last time she was seeing them. She was twenty-three.

"We'll miss you, Miss Alice." the March Hare had proclaimed solemnly.

He was holding back his tears. Alice tried her best not to cry herself. She was not a Miss anymore, but nobody called her Mrs Hargreaves in this world.

"I have to. I am no longer a child." she said, knowing she was holding the dormouse against her chest for the last time.

She had done it quite a lot since her first trip to Wonderland. She really liked the small creature. She had like small animals for as long as she could remember, and the warm furry ball was no exception. She stroke his fur gently, unable to face her friends' dismay. Luckily, the dormouse was asleep.

"You haven't been a little girl for some time, Alice." a nuage of smoke that Alice knew to be the blue caterpillar observed.

She didn't cough. She was used to it, after all those years. Not that she liked the smell very much. She put the dormouse down on the table carefully and took an empty dirty cup in her hands.

She had this need to manipulate things when she was nervous, her hands unable to rest while her mind was in turmoil.

She knew what she had to say wouldn't please the Wonderlanders. However, she was a fervent supporter of the truth. That was why she had talked of Wonderland with her husband.

“I have been a married woman for two years. Reginald says it is time for me to let go of my imaginary friends.”

She remembered this conversation vividly. She had been in tears when she had left her husband’s study. His words had been harsh. She had to grow up, she would have to settle an example for their unborn child, not encouraging them in everlasting fantasies.

“Imaginary ? Is that all we are for you ?” the Mad Hatter lashed out.

She winced a bit, her hold on the empty teacup went tighter.

She knew she had it coming, and yet she felt wholly unprepared for this conversation.

“Hatter, please -” she begged, standing up. He also stood up.

He looked composed, but his eyes… His inhuman, tortured eyes. Their strange brightness seemed to pierce your soul. Alice could read the unbearable pain darkening them, making them duller. It was like seeing roses wither under your gaze.

People said he was mad. Alice could only tell he was in pain.

Younger, she had yearned to fix him. She wanted to learn him how to be happy. Their lengthy discussions helped, she thought. He guided her when she was a little girl. He wasn’t guide material, but he tried. Alice would have benefited from more people trying in her entourage.

It was before she was able to understand that people weren’t things you could fix and that you couldn’t make mental pain disappear but only dull the ache.

Alice was well in her nineteenth year when her friendship with the Hatter shifted. 

She had friends in her world - her sister Edith, and Milicient Pearson, and Jonathan Ingell and Lily Everbridge. Not very close friends, except for Edith, but people she liked to talk to. And she had special friends in Wonderland. But what she had with the Hatter was beginning to be special in a different way.

She liked laying in the grass and looking at the sky with her head on his knees.  
Hearing him laugh was like seeing shooting stars. Utterly mind blowing and rare enough to be a treasured memory.

Her heart was beating faster when he was close and thinking about him at her parents’ house made her melancholic.

It was then that she realised that Wonderland had slowly but surely taken her parents’ house's place as home in her young woman’s heart.

It was too much. After this revelation, Alice had stayed away from Wonderland for a year. By then, she was engaged to the charming Reginald Hargreaves. It was a great shock for Wonderland’s inhabitants. Alice was not a small child anymore. They knew she was going to drift away from them. It was expected, now that she had linked herself to another Earth person.

Even if time in Wonderland worked differently, and her absence of a year was barely noticed, its foreseen consequences had hurt her friends.

The Hatter had refused to talk to her for what Alice thought was two solid hours but were possibly mere minutes. Eventually, they talked. Alice told him her parents wanted her to marry Mr Hargreaves and that it was the sensical thing to do. That was the wrong thing to say to the Wonderlander.

They had never addressed the issue of their tender feelings for each other. They usually fluttered in the air but stayed unstated. Alice and The Hatter knew about it but she had made it so they couldn’t act on it.

The first time she went back to Wonderland after her wedding had been stranger than ever. The Hatter was nowhere to be seen and the others hid from her. None of them had time to talk with her.

She had cried bitterly under a large tree. It reminded her of the river of tears the child-Alice had produced, and she had cried even more, the dormouse pressed against her heart. Him being asleep had prevented him to run away from her like her other friends had.

The Hatter had returned before she had to come back to her new home, though. They talked a lot, about their feelings for once. They accepted the situation they were in, he tried to understand she had done what was best for her. They remained good friends, even if they longed for something else.

It had to be that way. Her wedding had been a good opportunity for Alice. It had to be that way. What future could they had had together ? 

And now, she was leaving. Forever. 

She blinked the tears away. She had make a choice.

The Hatter looked like he struggled with words. Sometimes he opened his mouth, only to close it without forming words. Alice wondered what she wanted to hear from him, exactly. She wasn’t sure. Approbation, certainly. Forgiveness. 

“Don’t we feel real ?”

She was startled by a cold hand on her naked forearm. She hadn’t seen the Hatter move. She dropped the teacup she was holding. 

She watched it roll under the table in the grass, shattering in a thousand pieces when the cup met the wooden table leg. A proper metaphor for her own heart. It escaped from her chest, rolled a bit and broke in tiny shards.

Alice noticed the Hatter hadn’t removed his hand from her flushing skin. Propriety wasn’t something taught in Wonderland. Or if it was, her friends lacked it seriously.

The Hatter’s question brought memories back. 

She thought about Mr Dodgson and his funny book about Wonderland. A story for children. She had trusted him with her world, and she had felt betrayed, like he had mocked it.  
Alice had been so certain he had believed her, then. A child’s wish. She shook her head. 

How could THIS not be real ? How could the dormouse’s heat against her chest ? How could the Hatter’s haunted glance ? How could the March Hare bouncing steps ? How could the foul smoke of the wise Caterpillar’s narghile ? Alice’s imagination wasn’t that good.

“Of course you do. But -”

It was her turn to struggle with her words. The Hatter’s presence was unsettling. 

“The poor woman is trying to save her marriage. Let her.” the nearest flower bed said.

Surprisingly, Alice’s relationship with Wonderland’s flowers had improved greatly with the years. She gave them a relieved smile. They understood. Good, she was not sure she was understanding what she was doing herself. Maybe her other friends will, with time. 

“You’re welcome to come back anytime.” the March Hare said, looking at her earnestly. 

She looked away. Were all farewells this painful ? 

“You know I won’t. I promised Reginald.” she said, a lump in her throat.

She knelt and kissed his furry cheek. The March Hare reddened and promised to remember her.

A broad smile appeared in the air, soon followed by the rest of the Cheshire cat. Alice clasped her hands together. She wasn’t sure he would come to say his farewells. She was glad to see he had. 

“The child you’re bearing will find a path to this world if she wishes so. And so would her daughter and each eldest daughter of her direct descendants.” he offered. 

How - 

Alice hadn’t even tell her friends she was pregnant. 

“I am grateful for your gift and saddened that I have to depart. You will always live in my memories. All of you.” she said.

Her heart felt heavy in her chest. She was ready. She only needed to touch the grass and wish for her house. She was about to kneel but remembered the Hatter’s hand still on her forearm.

“Stay, Alice.” he implored.

She knew she would remember his troubled eyes years away from now. She took a deep breath.  
To hell with propriety. She threw herself into his arms.  
“I can’t”, she said, thinking about her unborn child.

Reginald’s child. A girl. The cat had said so. 

Before anyone could react, Alice backed away from him and knelt in the long, unkempt vibrant green grass. In a few moments, the grass she will be standing on would be cut and from a more natural colour. 

“Thank you.” she said before touching it.

She felt herself disappear from Wonderland and appear in her own garden. The grass was neatly trimmed and of a dull, boring green. 

If the young woman had stayed one more minute, she wouldn’t have been able to go back to her life. Her boring, sensical life, like the Hatter used to say.

Alice felt hollow. Hopefully the baby’s arrival would change that.

“Farewell, lively Alice. Welcome back, dull Mrs Hargreaves.” she sighed.


End file.
